No. 57.— 1906.] 



SINHALESE ART. 



S3 



buildings and their elaborate decoration, a new impulse 

 was given to the indigenous arts, and new elements added 

 to them ; just as the Christian missionaries of St. Patrick's 

 time spread a knowledge of writing in Ireland and replaced 

 the purely native decorative art by an art based on the 

 Byzantine. 



We have finally a still later period of Greek influence to 

 consider. In the early sculptures, representations of Buddha 

 were quite unknown ; early Buddhist artists represented the 

 founder of their religion by symbols only.* The first figures 

 of Buddha appear in the Gandhara sculptures (by artists of 

 what is known as the Grseco-Buddhist school) in the extreme 

 north-west of India. These works were executed between 

 the 1st and 5th centuries a.d., while Buddhism still flourished 

 in India ; they show clean traces of Greek, Roman, and even 

 Christian influence. " The ideal type of Buddha was created 

 for Buddhist art by foreigners " (Griinwedel, " Buddhist Art 

 in India"). These Gandhara types were the foundation of all 

 later representations of Buddha, whether in Burma, China, 

 or Ceylon. It may be that some of the decorative patterns of 

 the foreigners travelled with the new type of figure sculpture. 

 But as most of the decorative motifs under consideration, 

 as well as particular modes of associating them (wellenranke , 

 &c), are already found at Bharhut, it is unnecessary to assign 

 their introduction to this later period of stronger classical 

 influence. We may however safely say that whatever traces 

 of Greek influence already existed were likely to be strength- 

 ened and reinforced at the later period of classical influence 

 on figure sculpture. The latest period of indirect Greek 

 influence on Indian art, viz., at second-hand through the 

 Mohammedan conquests, left Ceylon, or at any rate the 

 Sinhalese, untouched. 



Before leaving the question of Greek influence, we may 

 remark that it is possible to attach undue importance to the 



* The Mahdwansa account of the Ruanveli relic chamber cannot 

 therefore be contemporaneous. 

 G 2 



